Ajji

Ten-year-old Manda is sexually assaulted. Because the man who did it has political protection, the police let the file die and the family finds no recourse anywhere. So the child’s grandmother, old and unwell, takes the matter on herself. Devashish Makhija shapes it as a revenge story, but what it actually shows is why the law does not protect a child. It has also been described as a dark reading of Little Red Riding Hood, with the grandmother’s home standing in for the house at the edge of the forest. Sushama Deshpande plays Ajji. The film competed in the New Currents section at Busan in 2017. Makhija does not show the assault; the camera stays afterwards, in the child’s silence and in the woman’s preparation.